


Flowers On Her Hair

by onlybylaura



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII, Star Wars Episode VIII, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, and none of us really want to deal with it, but guess what bitch i am PREPARED FOR ANY OUTCOME JJ THROWS AT ME, i love them all so much, i write fanfic to anticipate all the heartbreaks i'll be suffering when episode ix comes out, it's just saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad, leia funeral, my children hurting, that funeral scene we're all expecting, why did i start writing this HONESTLY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 22:45:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13937013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlybylaura/pseuds/onlybylaura
Summary: Ben Solo attends his mother's funeral by himself, but he finds company and solace where he least expects it.





	Flowers On Her Hair

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this fic! You can find me over on twitter as @laurampohl or on tumblr as @celaenasardothiens. Come scream @ me after reading this.

Ben brought orchids to his mother’s funeral.

There were so many people in the city that it was hard to get closer. Hundreds, thousands of people flooded the streets, waiting for the parade that would bring General Leia Organa home. Naboo’s domed rooftops shone golden as the sun set, and Ben stood alone on the ledge, casting his gaze down. Hidden by the shadows.

He shouldn’t have come. The part of him that still made sense warned him not to. It was dangerous. He could be recognized. But perhaps it was mercy that in the end, not many people knew what lay beneath the mask of Kylo Ren.

Ben watched as the parade started, alone in the rooftops. He could barely distinguish his mother’s glass coffin as it came through, but he could hear the cries. The sentiment. Maybe not all of them had worked for the Resistance or truly believed, but they’d known Leia and loved her so that now they could mourn her passing. Most cried, some tried to touch her as the casket floated through Naboo’s streets. He spotted some he knew from the Resistance, heads bowed as they escorted the coffin.

Hux had talked to him about launching an attack, but Ben couldn’t bear to think of it. Ben said the whole galaxy would turn on them, and he pretended that this didn’t have anything to do with his personal feelings.

Today was a day of mourning.

A slow and thin rain started to fall on Naboo as her glass coffin passed and made its way to the burial grounds. He barely could see her face from up here. He didn’t know what was worse. Ben felt a pressure to his chest, a sudden feeling of breathlessness, and he gulped down, hard.

He wouldn’t cry now.

He wouldn’t.

He held on to the orchids as she passed. He didn’t remember a lot of his childhood with his mother—it was all a blur, as if the bad memories had lodged themselves in its place. But there were some flashes he still grasped, from time to time, almost surprised to see them there when he found them.

One of them was the orchids in the garden. Leia had planted them for Breha Organa, her mother. She’d told Ben that Breha loved orchids, and it made her feel closer to her mother, now gone.

Ben watched until the rain started pouring, and everyone looked up at the sky as Leia’s casket went on the parade. He didn’t move from the roof for a long time.

 

#

 

Ben held on to the orchids when everyone else was gone. They left the casket in the burial grounds, with guards watching over it. People came and went, crying over her body, putting their hands to the glass. Poe Dameron had put his forehead on it and cried for a long time, and Ben had watched without being able to do anything.

It was deep within him, a loss he couldn’t even begin to understand yet. The city was alive with lights, and yet his mother was dead, in a casket, with flowers on her hair. They’d kept her buns, at least. That would have made her happy.

Ben waited and watched as hundreds of people came and went, and at last, when it was dark as night and no one was in sight, Ben came out from his hiding place.

It didn’t take too much to avoid the guards. The casket had been placed in a terrace along the riverbank, and the view overlooked the mountains and the rivers. He didn’t know if Leia liked his place. Naboo was not her home. Alderaan was.

He placed the orchids next to her casket, his throat closed shut. He couldn’t find words. He didn’t know if he needed the words, or if she could feel him. If there was still a part of her here that would know how he felt. That he’d come to see her, after all.

There was only that small connection, after all these years. He couldn’t press the button. Ben knew she was there on the bridge of the ship, and he knew what he was supposed to do. Kill his past.

Now he was still here, and the past had gotten the better of him.

Slowly, he took off his gloves, and put his finger against the glass. He didn’t feel anything. There was no sign of the strong spirit of his mother. And the most terrible thing was that when he looked at her, he could truly see her age.

Leia hadn’t looked old when he’d left her.

When they’d left each other.

He observed her wrinkles, her nose, her hair. Those things that were meant to be familiar. But the face of his mother as it stared back at him, peaceful, with her eyes closed, was not the face he remembered.

He wished he could remember more, but it was all too long ago.

Using the Force, as quiet as he could, he lifted the casket and put the orchids inside. On Leia’s hands were his father’s dice set, gold. She wore no grand outfits and no medals, but they knew her worth anyway. One by one, Ben put the white orchids with her so even then, she’d have something familiar.

It wasn’t much, but it was all he could offer.

When he was done, he closed the casket again, and a memory stirred inside him. Not of his mother, but of someone else—a woman with long curly hair and white flowers in her hair, dressed in a blue mantel. She’d kissed his forehead and left like a ghost.

Ben knew he should go. He shouldn’t have spent so much time here, though he knew he wanted to come. To see his mother one last time. In a way, he was glad that it hadn’t been battle that took her, but old age. It was fitting this way. No one defeated Leia Organa in battle, and now, they never would. Leia had embraced death like her old friend, and she would carry the legends home.

He was moving to go when he saw a shadow emerge from the trees. He didn’t turn. He felt the connection, hitting him suddenly like a slap to his face. He didn’t know what it felt like to her. To him, Rey’s part of the bond was like grass after the rain, the wind that swept the desert harsh, and the calmness before the storm.

Ben wondered if she could feel them, too.

“How long have you been here?” He was the first to ask.

“A while,” Rey answered, walking away from the shadows and letting herself be bathed by moonlight.

It felt like it had been both an eternity and a second ago since they’d last seen each other. Ben hadn’t tested the bond after Rey had shut the Falcon’s door in his face after Crait. He didn’t have the courage.

And now this.

She walked closer to him. Rey had let her hair down her shoulders, and there was a braid to honor his mother. She wore a pale gray dress that fitted her form beautifully, and showed enough skin to make him turn away, not knowing if he should be looking.

He watched her out of the corner of his eyes, his heart hammering inside his chest. Nervous. Foolish. All those things at once.

Ben had promised Luke he would destroy her, but it had been just another lie that slipped from his mouth. He was so used to lying. He hated it. His mother had lied to him about his grandfather, his father had lied, Luke had lied. Snoke had lied too. And he wanted to burn all the lies down until there was nothing but truth staring back at him. Truth was harsh. But it’s what he had learned.

“I thought you’d come,” Rey finally said, looking at him. “I wasn’t sure. But I believed it.”

He didn’t know if that was a compliment. He wasn’t sure what it meant.

Ben kept looking at his mother, and at the flowers.

“You brought those?” She asked, pointing to them.

Ben nodded, small. That’s how he felt in this terrace at this Naboo palace. Small and shrunken. Insignificant.

There was a knot in his throat, and he was scared that his voice wouldn’t come out.

“She liked them,” Ben finally said. “Because of her mother. They reminded her of home. Of Alderaan.”

Rey nodded, and bit her lower lip. She made no sign of attacking him. He was glad of that. She could take him right there and then, and he would do nothing.

He couldn’t do anything here.

“Why Naboo?” Rey asked. “Why bring her here?”

Ben found it easier to talk. He could fill that space between them with words. He’d never been truly good at words. He was better at studying them, or even training. He always found a way to get them wrong otherwise.

“This was where my grandmother was born,” he told her. “Where Queen Amidala married Anakin Skywalker.”

Rey looked up as she made the connection. Ben couldn’t imagine them here. His grandfather, young. Before he turned to the dark side.

Still he remembered the woman with the flowers on her hair.

“This isn’t her home,” he repeated. “But there’s no Alderaan anymore. Better to have left her in the sky.”

He didn’t know why he said the words so harshly. Rey turned to him again, frowning.

“There is nothing,” she said. “Is there where you’d have her?”

He didn’t say anything, only stared. His grandfather had been responsible for the destroying of Alderaan. He was the grandson of the man who had destroyed what his mother loved the most.

Ben had destroyed things too. Things she’d never be able to forgive him for.

“At least she’d have gone back,” he replied finally. “To where she truly belongs.”

Rey didn’t say anything for a second, and only looked at the coffin. Had she come to mourn Leia, too? How well did she know his mother? Leia had affected everyone around her, always. It’s how she was. Beautiful, striking, powerful. Ben had been afraid of her. How she never backed down in a fight, faced everything head on.

He hadn’t really inherited that trait from her.

“She’ll be fine here,” Rey finally said. “I don’t think it matters that much, don’t you?”

Ben clenched his jaw. But when he looked back at Rey, there was a sadness in her eyes. A sadness that he thought he understood.

It didn’t matter where they got buried. Their bodies were only made of dust, they would vanish into the ground or the river, vanquished. But the spirit remained. And to it, it did not matter where the body got buried.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Rey finally said. “I don’t know what it feels like.”

He didn’t know, either. It was the first time he’d felt something so deep. He didn’t know how to react. He didn’t know what to say. Only standing there, looking at a body who would not be able to hear him, no matter what he had to say.

“Come home, Ben.”

He looked up to meet her eyes.

“This is not my home.”

“Make it your home,” Rey said. Her tone was firm. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to pretend.”

He waited quietly. This night didn’t feel real enough. Ben looked at the orchids inside his mother’s glass coffin, and her wrinkled hands clutching Han’s gambling dice. Those were the things that meant home, once upon a time.

Not anymore.

“You could have come with me,” he finally said. Rey met his eyes. This time, she wasn’t crying.

“Then it wouldn’t have been me,” she replied.

This scene was like a dream. The lake, the trees, the whispers of the wind. He wondered if he wasn’t just imagining things. But there she was, impossible, just out of reach.

Just where he couldn’t admit he wanted to be.

He wanted to begin it all once again. Reliving the start. Saying the things he meant to say, and not in a way that was confusing. To get back those small moments. Reliving every second to wonder what would happen if he’d done something different. If she would have stayed.

Here, at his mother’s end, he wished for a new beginning.

The smell of the orchid petals was strong, and when he looked up, the tree on the terrace was undoing itself. The petals of the roses showered white, washing over Ben and Rey, trembling in the wind. He looked up, watching as it rained like it was part of a dream.

Rey reached for his hand, and he let her grasp it. Her fingers weren’t cold as he expected. They were firm, squeezing his hand tight.

“I’m sorry,” Ben whispered back to her, as if afraid the words would leave him too fast, seal him inside himself.

When Rey looked back at him, he didn’t feel as broken. He didn’t feel like he was swimming against the tide, trying to grasp an impossible breath. Accomplish the impossible. He didn’t know what he was doing.

But right here, he didn’t have to think about those things.

“Stay,” Rey said.

It was the only word she needed to say. Stay—that was all. It almost sounded simple. And while on the shores of Naboo, with the wind dying down, with everything else hidden, maybe he could ignore what was out there.

Just stay a while more in the dream.

So Ben reached out for her, and Rey wrapped her arms around him. Ben held her, resting his chin on the top of her head, embracing her while this lasted.

He wouldn’t think about anything else. He wouldn’t think of the future or the past, or what anything else still meant.

Tonight, he would be here. He could almost feel another presence, and when he opened his eyes, by the river, he saw two faint images of two different women. One with the flowers on her hair. The other was his mother. They smiled.

It was a second, maybe just his imagination. It didn’t matter.

Ben stayed.


End file.
